I'm currently both reading AND listening to the book The Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. I'll admit the title caught my attention on Amazon.com and bought it simply based on that, not knowing anything else about the book.

The book describes how the author was able to eliminate a ton of unnecessary stress from his life, and then outsource the rest in order to free himself to only work 4 hours per week to make the same (or more) income.

Is it possible or just a fairy-tale fantasy? There are some interesting concepts in this book. One is the 80/20 rule - which is not new. The theory is that 20% of your customers will contribute 80% of your income. (Or the flip side is 80% of your customers will only contribute 20% of your income.) So why not focus on the 20% of customers that pay your bills. Don't be afraid to fire customers who are giving you headaches and very little profits. Or those customers who you call every week and never order from you. Put them on autopilot and focus on the small number of great customers. Find out why they're so great, and then find a few more just like them.

Another interesting concept is the idea of elimination. Reduce the number of emails coming in. Ask people not to CC you on things you don't need to be involve in. Reduce the number of meetings. Delegate more things - your customer service staff should be empowered to make the customer happy without having to come to you to ask for small things. Create a FAQ for the most frequently asked questions. Reduce the drains on your time. Make people around you aware that you consider your time valuable and don't let them waste it with idle chit chat and stuff.

And finally, Ferriss recommends you outsource as much as you can. Get a virtual assistant for $4 an hour from India, and let them do the preliminary research you need to write that article, let them blog for you, let them do your business and personal errands that take a long time, even let them respond to your emails for you. Can you find 10 hours of week of tasks for someone else to do, for $40 a week? Are there things you'd rather be doing for 10 more hours a week (playing with your kids, sleeping, planning your next big project) that you'd pay $40 to free up? It's seductive to free up a lot of time for so little money.

Ferriss has a blog, and recently did an interesting interview with Robert Scoble. An interesting theory - one which I will be slowly putting to the test over the next couple of months.